Open Access  Subscription Access

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of replacing soybean meal and groundnut cake meal with cooked and decorticated kidney bean seed meals on the performance characteristics of broilers. One hundred and eighty day old broiler chicks of Anak strain were raised on six experimental diets. The processed kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) meals were incorporated at the rate of 200g/kg of feed. The diets were formulated to be iso-nitrogenous and iso-caloric. Each diet was fed to a group of 30 birds for a period of 56 days. There were significant (P 0.05) differences in feed intake among the treatment groups. Apparent digestibility of crude protein, ether extract, crude fibre, ash and nitrogen free extract differed significantly (P < 0.05) among the treatments.

Key words: Legumes; processing; anti-nutritional factors; performance

Moor Journal of Agricultural Research Vol.4(2) 2003: 236-241